A solid blue circle appeared in the ground, it looked like a puddle of opaque water.

From it appeared a frogman, or rather a frogwoman, she had copper-coloured hair and a bright yellow raincoat.

“That’s the bastard!” she thought seeing John’s character.

Before she even finished typing her message to him, lights began appearing around the town.

Spheres of white particles that expanded into rings or rather holes; they were portals.

“Banann: She’s here!” cried the first player to emerge from the portal.

A group of over a dozen players clad in robes, armours and different costumes, the one thing they had in common was a tabard that showed the rook chess piece over a white and purple checker-pattern shield.

Over their characters’ heads were their usernames, below that was another piece of information.

Their guild, ‘The jGuardians’.

A few of the characters stuck out from the rest, not only did they wear those tabards, but also a similarly themed cape.

John looked at the events unfold in total shock.

Suddenly, from the ground came roots and vines, tangling around the frogwoman and JohnWillStab.

“PastaPerfect: Hello~” one of the caped individuals exclaimed, he wore a white suit with the same tabard, his hair was short but curly and had the colour of sun-bleached sand.

His eyes were brown and his mouth was eerily wide, giving off a condescending smile.

“♛: Go eat a d#$k!” that was but the first of a long string of insults.

“PastaPerfect: I am truly insulted! ~”

“♛: I can count the amount of s#&ts I give on the fingers of an armless child!”

PastaPerfect laughed.

“PastaPerfect: Crude as ever I see~”

“PastaPerfect: That’s fine~”

JohnWillStab was desperately trying to get out of the roots that kept him in place, he tried jumping and any other movement.

PastaPerfect turned to face John.

“PastaPerfect: A friend of yours? A cheater perhaps? ~”

“♛: ADDING ~ AT THE END OF YOUR SENTENCES ISN’T A CHARACTER!”

PastaPerfect’s persona did a one-eighty.

“PastaPerfect: Fine, if you don’t want to RP then you can go straight to the dungeon…”

“JohnWillStab: Hey, what’s up with the roots on my feet?” he asked, at this point he didn’t even bother to stand and was instead sitting on the grass.

PastaPerfect turned to face John and approached him, curiously trying to recall where he saw his name.

“PastaPerfect: Hold on…~”

“PastaPerfect: Do I know you? ~”

The question made John’s heart sink.

“JohnWillStab: OF COURSE NOT!” he exclaimed.

“JohnWillStab: HOW COULD YOU KNOW ME!?”

“JohnWillStab: JOHNWILLSTAB!”

A bead of sweat ran down his face.

“I think I didn’t blow my cover…”

“PastaPerfect: Aren’t you the new guy?~” he asked obliviously.

After a few seconds of silence, he nodded.

“JohnWillStab: Yeah…”

PastaPerfect shook his head.

“PastaPerfect: Resorting to cheating on day one?~”

“JohnWillStab: What?!”

“HOW WAS I CHEATING?!”

“Is Bonifacius helping me technically cheating?!”

John looked over to the equally-trapped frogwoman.

“Hold on, they called her a cheater… are they assuming we’re friends or something?!”

“PastaPerfect: How disappointing…~”

Bonifacius appeared before the gates of the city, blade in one hand, shield in the other.

“Bonifacius: Stop right there!”

“PastaPerfect: More of them? ~” he turned to face Bonifacius.

“Bonifacius: What brings the jGuardian mutts to Grimwood?” he asked.

“PastaPerfect: …~”

“PastaPerfect: What?~”

“Bonifacius: What are thou doing with my ally?”

PastaPerfect turned to look at the other jGuardians.

“PastaPerfect: Does anybody know what he’s saying?~”

“JohnWillStab: He’s roleplaying,” John clarified.

“Bonifacius: Are thou alright, friend?” Bonifacius asked approaching the immobilized John.

“JohnWillStab: Yeah, I’m good, I’d say this isn’t the worst-case scenario for a tentacle-based ability…” he remarked breathing a sigh.

♛ played the “/laugh” emote causing her character to burst into laughter.

“♛: Nice!”

“PastaPerfect: I see, so you confirm that you’re on their side? ~” he asked flicking his hair.

He reached for the holster at his hip.

♛ kept trying to break out of the roots, though the variables for the spell were highly encrypted, right now it was a matter of waiting for her software to brute-force the encryption and setting the duration of the spell to zero, or just removing it all together if she got lucky.

She glanced to her list of decrypted variables regarding the root spell affecting her.

“Val0: unknown”

“Val1: unknown”

“Val2: unknown”

“Val3: unknown”

There were dozens of them.

“Val13: 255, 255, 255”

“Damn it… I’m not getting any useful ones…” she thought marking ‘Val13’ as ‘Colour’.

This was nothing more than an educated guess since all the numbers were two-hundred and fifty-five it would suggest that this was the red, green and blue colour data for the entity.

“Val0: unknown”

“Val1: Grimwood”

“Colour: 255, 255, 255”

“Val3: unknown”

“Aha! Val1 is the zone… so Val0 could be the coordinates…”

“I can’t teleport out by using my own coordinates since the trap keeps teleporting me back here… but if I can teleport the trap itself somewhere safe, I can figure the rest out myself!”

She continued looking at her program crack more useless values, textures, bump maps, level-of-detail model variants and so on…

A loud explosion could be heard.

♛ looked over to the screen and saw Bonifacius standing with his shield before him as PastaPerfect held his smoking gun pointed at him.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

One shot after the other, they all ricocheted off Bonifacius’ shield and into the nearby trees.

Throughout all this, Bonifacius was watching his stamina tick down slowly.

“PastaPerfect: Bang~ Bang~ Bang~” he narrated his attacks with great glee.

Bonifacius cast [Master Charge] which launched him forward, shield-first as he smashed into the sloppy gunman.

PastaPerfect was thrown backwards into a group of his minions.

The officer gritted his teeth as he stood back up.

“PastaPerfect: …you’re a cheater too aren’t you!?” he demanded dropping his “~” façade.

“PastaPerfect: Those were enchanted bullets; normal armour should have been cracked open on contact!”

Bonifacius breathed a sigh.

“Bonifacius: Tis no typical armour…” Bonifacius began.

“Bonifacius: Level one-hundred, the top level of the tower of tongues raid, the final boss, each piece of this armour has less than a one-percent chance of appearing!” he exclaimed.

“PastaPerfect: That looks nothing like the gold knight armour!”

Bonifacius shook his head.

“Bonifacius: Thou must have misunderstood me; I said the final boss…”

“Bonifacius: The final titan resting upon his throne, reachable only with flying mounts!”

“Banann: The platinum hero armour!”

Another bullet flew out at Bonifacius, it was easily blocked by his shield.

“PastaPerfect: If you think you’ll impress me with a rare drop, then you’re very mistaken!~”

“Bonifacius: I shall give thee a choice to leave me and my ally be, there is no point in thou losing thy honour points…” he offered.

PastaPerfect breathed an annoyed sigh.

“PastaPerfect: Alright, you know what, f#*k the roleplay, just arrest these guys!” he commanded as the dozen players moved in towards Bonifacius, John and ♛.

Bonifacius lifted his blade, he pulled it back as he began casting [severing slash].

In one fell swoop, four of the melee attackers were cut in two, another four were injured too badly to fight without bleeding out.

Immediately, panic began to spread.

Due to the exponentially increasing effort and time investment required to reach level one-hundred, most players stayed around level sixty or seventy.

Another explosion rang out, this time it wasn’t a bullet from PastaPerfect.

“Pandors_T_T: Nice, trying to pierce armour with pistols…” said the human standing in the back, he had short, black hair and very short facial hair.

He was wearing leather armour and didn’t have a cape on much to his own annoyance.

In his hand was a rifle, gold in colour with a cartoonishly long muzzle.

He loaded another enchanted armour-piercing bullet into it.

“Pandors_T_T: I think you should hand over the officer role to me to repent for your failures…”

“PastaPerfect: Whatever, I came here in my RP gear so I couldn’t penetrate his armour, big deal…” he replied with a shrug.

Bonifacius’ character stood with a gaping hole in his torso, it was blown out with an explosive armour-piercing sniper round from Pandors_T_T.

“JohnWillStab: Bonifacius!”

As Bonifacius’ character began to bleed out and his health neared zero he cast [Adrenaline Rush] which stopped him from losing any blood for a short amount of time as long as he still had at least one limb attached.

“Bonifacius: Fear not! Organ failure isn’t nearly enough to defeat a true tank!”

His character let out a battle cry as all the under-levelled players were placed under a “Fear” spell which made them unable to fight and forced them to run around haphazardly.

Since John and Bonifacius were in the same party and ♛ was level one-hundred they weren’t affected.

He took a deep breath.

He clicked on a spell he didn’t need to activate in a long time, [Colossus Stomp].

Slowly, he lifted his armoured foot up into the air.

The ground shook and chunks of the earth began to tremble and come loose.

Trees began to fall down, drastically increasing Bonifacius’ woodcutting stat.

Monsters all over the nearby area began to panic and run away, struck with a weaker version of the fear effect from before.

Like a thunderbolt, his foot raced towards the ground where everyone under level fifty that was unfortunate enough to stand before him was reduced to bloody mist, the others were badly injured and possibly killed by the rocks which stuck out of the ground like spikes.

It was too early to celebrate his victory as his foot was blown off by Pandors_T_T using another explosive armour-piercing sniper round, beside him stood a hooded fishman.

He disappeared in a flash, appearing behind Bonifacius, dagger in hand.

“Olivionion: Rip” he laughed as he buried his dagger into Bonifacius’ back.

Bonifacius spun around, sword at the ready as Olivionion used an ability to manoeuvre around him and stab him in the back again.

“Olivionion: A tank fighting against a dagger DPS and a sniper… Tough luch…” he said with a grin.

He jumped away from Bonifacius, much faster and much further than JohnWillStab could manage.

At this point, the adrenaline wore off and Bonifacius was once again dying of blood loss.

With his health nearing zero and his stamina already at zero, his character fell backwards into a pool of his own blood.

“Bonifacius: Perhaps… I should have been more… aggressive…”

The “…” were just for roleplay reasons, obviously, he could still type normally.

Bonifacius looked to his status list and saw two units of stamina draining poison, the fishman with the daggers must have poisoned him.

“JohnWillStab: NO! YOU KILLED MY GUIDE!” he cried looking over to Bonifacius.

Suddenly he was bathed in green light as his wound began to heal.

“♛: That’s what I love so much about you roleplayers”

She was now free from the roots binding her to the ground, so was John.

“♛: All that talking gave me enough time to decrypt the root-binding spell, so thanks for that!”

“PastaPerfect: QUICK, TRAP HER! ~” he commanded desperately.

Suddenly, ♛ became encased in a massive block of ice only for it to melt in a matter of seconds.

“♛: Already got that one, I just set the melt variable from false to true!” she laughed.

As a druid, she also had access to the root spell.

All the jGuardian members were suddenly trapped in roots that coiled around their entire bodies.

Olivionion managed to shadow-step out of the scene, taking Pandors_T_T with him.

Bonifacius got up, his health was now full thanks to ♛’s druid healing magic.

“Bonifacius: Thou have my thanks!” he said with a thumbs up.

“♛: You bought me enough time to crack their spells, now we’re even…” she shrugged listlessly as the jGuardians who were trapped in the roots disappeared without a trace.

JohnWillStab casually approached the two.

“JohnWillStab: Where’d they go?” he asked looking at the spot where they were only moments earlier.

“♛: I teleported them to Diasole, it’ll take them a while to get back…” she replied with a satisfied smile.

“♛: More importantly…” she began as her character turned to face JohnWillStab.

“♛: Where is my money?!” she demanded.

JohnWillStab took a step back.

“JohnWillStab: Holy s#*t, I thought my landlord died in that car fire!” he exclaimed with a look best described as financial dread.

“♛: What?”

“JohnWillStab: …“

“JohnWillStab: So you’re not my landlord?“

“♛: Of course not!”

“♛: I wrote a program for gold-laundering that sends gold to empty player IDs and then back to me, for some reason the ID 4221 was assigned to you, and so was my gold,”

“♛: It’s a pretty big pain to get items spawned in, so I’d prefer if you just handed it over,”

JohnWillStab opened his bag seeing ten silver coins and a few coppers.

“JohnWillStab: …”

“Hold on… was she the one who sent me all that gold in the tutorial?”

“JohnWillStab: How much gold did you send me exactly?”

“♛: It would have been like ten stacks of 100 gold coins.” She replied.

He felt his soul leave his body as his wallet shrivelled up into a raisin.

“Maybe I can just tell her what happened?”

“WHAT IF SHE TELEPORTS ME SOMEWHERE STUPID LIKE THE OTHER GUYS?!” he panicked.

He took a deep breath as he cracked another energy drink open.

“JohnWillStab: Do you accept payment in instalments?”

“♛: What do you mean? Did you spend some of it already?”

“JohnWillStab: Like, I pay you 10 silvers today and the rest in a couple years…?” he offered.

“♛: …”

“♛: Are you fu#*ing serious?!” she demanded.

John nodded sheepishly.

He fell to the ground with the “/plead” emote.

“JohnWillStab: I JUST JOINED THE GAME AND THE MONEY GOT WIPED FROM MY INVENTORY IN THE TUTORIAL, PLEASE DON’T TRACK MY IP AND HIRE AN OVERWEIGHT ASSASSIN ON A MOBILITY SCOOTER TO RUN ME OVER!” he exclaimed teary-eyed.

“♛: …” she watched the pitiful undead before her.

“Bonifacius: I see, it would seem the money issue has occurred because of thy program though…” he explained turning to face ♛.

“♛: …”

“♛: Tch!”

“Bonifacius: I fear that I may not have much more money than JohnWillStab, I do have a tendency to spend it, haha!”

“♛: WHY DO YOU TALK LIKE THAT!?” she demanded

“JohnWillStab: HE’S ROLEPLAYING!” John called back, still on the ground.

Her character suddenly flew up from the ground, she cast a levitation spell on herself.

JohnWillStab was still pleading for his life on the floor as a trade request appeared in the centre of his screen.

It was a simple piece of paper.

“♛: I guess it was my f*#kup,” she admitted.

“I’ll have to track down an item-spawning cheater…” she thought reluctantly.

“Suppose the whole attack on this town was my fault too…” she thought looking to John and Bonifacius.

John accepted the trade.

“♛: If you need help from a hacker use that card, it’ll cost you thought.” she explained.

“JohnWillStab: ALRIGHT, THANK YOU!” he cried.

“♛: You… can get up now…”

“JohnWillStab: THANK YOU!” John screamed standing up.

“♛: …you can also stop with the all-caps writing…” she remarked.

“JohnWillStab: MY CAPSLOCK KEY IS BROKEN!” he explained.

After a few uncomfortable seconds of silence, Crown became enveloped in roots, they looked like the ones from only moments earlier.

“♛: Later,”

In an instant, the roots were teleported to her hideout and ♛ with them.

As soon as all the strange people except Bonifacius were gone, JohnWillStab breathed a long, drawn-out sigh of relief.

“THAT WAS SCARY…” he thought.

Bonifacius approached John, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Bonifacius: Thou are making friends already!”

John turned to face Bonifacius.

“JohnWillStab: YOUR POSITIVITY SCARES ME…” he replied.